


Bangles

by ConvenientAlias



Category: Perilous Gard - Elizabeth Marie Pope
Genre: Bargaining, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Infidelity, Post-Canon, Sex for Favors, for a very specific favor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-22 16:40:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17063285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConvenientAlias/pseuds/ConvenientAlias
Summary: When Kate's husband falls ill, she strikes a deal with the Lady to save his life.





	Bangles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



It wasn’t that Kate hadn’t expected Randal to succeed in finding the Lady. She wouldn’t have sent him on a hopeless errand, not with things how they were around the manor. And she knew by now that Randal was very good at carrying a message. But.

She still had not prepared herself, quite, for the fact that arranging a meeting with the Lady would mean seeing the Lady, speaking to the Lady in person.

Ten years it had been, and Kate had lived them comfortably. She knew she looked like a different woman now—still tall but not so beanpole skinny, not to mention the wrinkles just beginning to form on her forehead and at the creases of her mouth. Somehow, though, she had expected the lady would be unchanged.

She was not.

Oh, she still had that air of mystery, majesty. Even her more human clothes could not change that. But her inhumanly pale skin had tanned and she had acquired some wrinkles too, and when she sat down in Kate’s parlor, she did not sit quite so straight.

“Tell me, Katherine Sutton,” she said, barely smiling, “what sort of disaster made you seek me out?”

“Hasn’t Randal told you?”

“He gave me your letter, but I did not read it. I thought I’d like to see you face to face and hear your plea.”

There was something vindictive about those last few words, and the look in the Lady’s eyes. _Ah_ , Kate thought. _She has not forgotten the last time we met, when_ she _had to beg aid from_ me.

Now it was her turn to be embarrassed.

“My husband is ill and dying,” she said.

“Christopher Heron?”

“My husband,” she repeated.

The Lady sighed. “That is the trouble with living among humans, marrying a human. You are all very frail. But I know you were very attached to the man. I suppose it is the sort of thing you could not help.”

“I wrote to you because I hoped you might be able to cure him.”

“I could give him the water we gave to rich pilgrims, and ease his leaving,” the Lady said. Her smile was more obvious now. Kate did not appreciate how pleased she seemed to be at the idea of Christopher Heron’s death.

“I know you know more than that. Your people are very talented with herbs, and… enchantments.” Much as the term galled her. “You could help him.”

The Lady rose from her chair. “I’ll see the man first, then.”

* * *

Christopher was not entirely conscious. Even so, he reacted to the Lady’s arrival with horror. He curled up in bed, covering his ears and muttering incomprehensibly.

Unsympathetic, the Lady put a hand to his forehead, then forced his mouth open and stared down his throat. Then she asked Kate a series of questions: How long had the illness lasted? What were the symptoms, other than the delirium and the temperature? What methods had she tried to cure him thus far?

Kate answered to the best of her abilities.

The Lady nodded. “We’ll talk about the rest in private, then. Take me to your quarters.”

Kate obeyed. That was what it was, obeying—because the Lady had spoken it as a command, despite how conciliating she had acted while playing the role of a worried doctor. Kate had sometimes disobeyed the Lady when she had been the Lady’s prisoner, even when it could have been the end of her. But now, in her own house where she was mistress, she could not get up the strength to disregard the orders of that voice. What was compelling about it was not just its authority but what that authority implied: that the Lady had power, not just to make Kate do what she wished, but to make things right. To help her, if only Kate would let her take charge.

In Kate’s room, the Lady sat on the bed. Sat on the edge, but did not perch—one could not use such a word with her. “You were right, Mistress Heron. I _can_ heal him.”

“And will you?”

The Lady folded her hands in her lap. “You know my people do not give something in exchange for nothing.”

Kate waited. Pointless to offer this woman money or goods. It was quite possible she would demand such things from another bargainer—even Fae had to live off something—but from Kate herself? Something far more choice, doubtless. Something painful.

The Lady bit her lip in consideration. Finally she said, “I think three nights would do it.”

“Three nights?”

“You will be mine for three nights,” the Lady said. “Each night I will give you a dose of my medicine for you to give your husband. On the third night he will be healed.”

Kate swallowed. “And what will I do for those three nights?”

The Lady smiled. “You will find out when you agree. There are forms to follow.” She held a hand out, palm up. “Do you accept my terms?”

* * *

The first night was that very night, and Kate was unsure how to feel about it. Truthfully she had expected the Lady to request something far more dire—her life, for example—and had not yet decided whether she would even accede. To a request this simple she could do nothing else. But still, when evening came and the Lady went into her bedroom and closed the curtains on the window, she could not help but feel uneasy.

The Lady lay down on the bed, languid but graceful. “It is the first night, Kate Sutton.”

“So it is.”

“Then tonight I will see you,” the Lady said.

Kate looked down at herself. “…you can see me already.”

“Yes, and I’m enjoying the view. But I will see more of you.” The Lady put her hands behind her head. “Dance for me.”

Kate did not often dance. When she did, it was usually at a function, with Christopher. Or at the very least, with a partner and with music.

“Dance for me,” the Lady repeated.

Kate slowly began to move her feet. She remembered a step they used to do in the village near the Perilous Gard. It had taken her the longest time to learn it, and even now it was hard to get it straight. Her feet fumbled. She could tell the Lady disapproved. As if it were yesterday, she heard Gwenhyfara’s words echoing in her head. “ _Walk as if you had a string attached to the top of your head, drawing you up. Light as a feather, yet careful so as not to break it. Now…”_

She pointed her feet, lifted her body, and tried to be light.

She danced for many long minutes, until her body was covered in sweat, her hair damp with it. The Lady said, “Stop. I have seen enough of that.”

She stopped. “Then are we done?”

“Enough of that, but not enough of you.” The Lady waved a hand. “Take off your gown.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

She took it off.

“And the shift, take that off as well. And those stockings.” The Lady sat up. “Let me see you.”

She took off her shift, and her stockings, and everything on her body. And then she stood naked.

The Lady nodded. She stood, now, and walked over to Kate, then around and around her. Her eyes swept all over Kate. They lingered in inappropriate areas—her nipples, growing hard in the night air, the bush over her groin. They also lingered in places that were simply odd: Her stomach, no longer as muscular as it had been at the Lady’s court, when she had done manual labor every day; her ankles, which protruded a little more than they ought; somewhere on her back, though she could not tell wear because she did not care to crane her neck and watch the Lady since it would only show how nervous she was. It was a careful gaze, and it took in everything of Kate that there was to see.

Then the Lady sat down on the bed again. She took one bracelet off her arms, which were covered in bangles. “There is a compartment under the jewel,” she said.

Kate took the bracelet and saw this was indeed true.

“Go to your husband and give him the powder inside, mixed into a glass of water. We are done for tonight. And I will see you more tomorrow.”

* * *

“It is the second night,” the Lady said. “Tonight I will touch you.”

Kate gaped.

“And close your mouth,” the Lady added. “Or I may close it for you.”

Kate shut her jaw with a click. She crossed her arms. “And for this touching, do you wish me to be naked again?”

“Not yet,” the Lady said. “I will take your clothes off myself. It is my privilege.”

Kate swallowed. “All right then.”

The Lady advanced on her. She stood still as the Lady examined with her hands what she had the night before examined with her eyes. She lifted Kate’s hair to caress her neck. She massaged the muscles of Kate’s back—through fabric—and then kneaded further down. She folded her arms around Kate’s waist, hands clasped over Kate’s stomach, and then moved up, a little further, to feel the weight of her breasts.

Abruptly she let go, and redirected her attention to the ties of Kate’s dress, the buckle of her belt. She stripped Kate quickly, even more efficiently than Kate had stripped herself the night before.

“Lady…”

“Yes?” the Lady asked.

Kate found that, as the Lady looked at her with hungry eyes again, as she put those hands back on her body, this time with no fabric covering it, she really had nothing to say.

It was not that she had not expected this. The Lady was not a person to make a light bargain, and Kate had seen the way the Lady had looked at her when she was still her slave. Then, something had held her back from what she might have done. Tonight, it was her right to fulfill her desires. There would be no stopping her.

She was content to massage for a while, first Kate’s back and then her front. Then, at last, she put her hands between Kate’s thighs and drew them slowly upwards, kneading muscle and occasionally pinching—pinching so hard Kate knew it would bruise. When she touched Kate’s labias and found them wet, it was clear by her expression exactly what she thought of that.

She stroked Kate to orgasm, then to orgasm again, and again, until Kate was so blissed out that she could barely think. Somehow they ended up on the bed, with the Lady straddling her, that smug smile on her face that broke only now and then into something fully vicious and utterly pleased.

At last, the Lady got off Kate. She gave her one last caress—over her face, with a slippery hand—and said, “Are we done for tonight, Kate Sutton?”

Kate almost said, _No_. But she forced herself to wordlessly nod instead.

The Lady handed her another bangle.

* * *

Christopher would be angry if he ever learned about this. Angry at himself, mostly.

But Kate had decided he would never learn about most of this since before she sent Randal to find the Lady in the first place.

* * *

On the third night, the Lady said, “Tonight, I will speak to you.”

“Is that all?” Kate asked, surprised. She had expected every night would be worse and worse—indeed, she had still not totally convinced herself the third night would not end with her death.

The Lady tilted her head and gave her a look, so she sat down on the bed close to the Lady and tried to look attentive. And the Lady began to speak.

She started with stories. She told stories of the Fae’s origin, and their history. She told abbreviated versions of ballads that would be more typical coming from Randal. She spoke of herbal lore, recited poems, and told riddles without revealing their answers. To all of this, Kate listened.

At last she said, “Do you know why I am saying all these things?”

“So I may listen,” Kate said. _So I may have my death from boredom, after all_.

“So you may hear,” the Lady said, “and so the hearing may change you. You think now it will not, but it will. You will never forget anything I have said tonight.”

Kate had never forgotten most of what she had heard in the Fae hall. She believed it. She did not believe, though, it would change her as much as the Lady seemed to hope. She was fey enough already.

“Are we done, then?”

“No. I still must speak to you some more. There is more for you to hear.” The Lady leaned back. “Are you prepared for the hearing?”

“I must hear, if you command it.”

The Lady’s eyes were sharp, sharp. She leaned forward again. “Then I tell you: I have never thought so much on a woman as you.” She leaned even closer, closing in on Kate’s face. “For ten years, you have been in my mind. I have never directed as _much_ mind towards a woman as you. I have never hated anyone more; I have never despised or loathed anyone more.”

Then she leaned closer still and her lips and tongue spoke to Kate in a different way. And Kate, at last, spoke her mind in return. Or perhaps more her heart than her mind. For she was not sure what it was exactly that she spoke, hate or desire or understanding. Only that she meant it.

One could not give oneself to a faerie, even for the night, and give her lies.

Afterwards, the Lady gave her the last bangle. Kate said, “Is that really all you have to say to me?”

“What, are you not done?”

Kate said, “We are never really done with each other.”

The Lady’s lips thinned. “I gave you a night.”

There was a noise, and Kate turned. When she looked back, the Lady was gone. So she never had the chance to say that she’d thought she had been the one giving a night in this arrangement.

* * *

And so Christopher Heron was well again, and all was well in the Heron household. Except for Kate, who was infected with a disease of a different sort. But she thought it unlikely that the Lady could cure it, having been its source, and what faerie medicine could not cure, human medicine surely never would. So she was silent on the matter, and silent on the matter of the Lady in general, and let Christopher’s healing be explained to him by Randal, who after all was as good at telling a story as he was at carrying a message.


End file.
